“You need one not at all. I just thought you might want to.”

“I don’t have a change of clothes.”

Ever went to a closet, neatly stocked, and handed her a clean towel and a black T-shirt.

Izzy thanked him and showered in a bathroom hardly big enough for her to fit, let alone for Ever; he must have to hunch over in the stall. Scrubbing at her skin with a washcloth, rubbing between her legs, feeling the prickle of nerves there, she thought of last night. She stepped out, toweled off, and put on her jeans and his shirt, leaving her rinsed underwear to dry on the towel bar. The clean towel even smelled of coffee, sandalwood, fireplace. She opened the medicine cabinet: toothbrushes, aspirin, bandages, gauze, hydrogen peroxide. She opened a drawer and rummaged around. There was a tube of toothpaste, which she used, squeezing some onto a wet finger and rubbing her teeth. There was floss in the drawer, a gold tube of lipstick, bobby pins, a few still trailing strands of dark hair. This made her shiver, and she shut the drawer.

“You should stay for a while,” Ever told her when she emerged. “My band’s coming to rehearse.”

She didn’t really want to go home, so she called Nephy and left a message saying she was out of town, asking her to check in on Yard. They hadn’t talked in a few days, ever since Miracle Manor. Izzy didn’t want to talk about what she’d discovered in Cyrus’s jacket. She wanted only to forget.

◆◆◆

Monsta: Word (guitar), Quinn (bass), and Robert (drums). Three tall men who resembled angels more than monsters. They all seemed a little surprised when they saw Izzy, but they didn’t say much.

While the band rehearsed in the studio, she and Dog went out through the screen door. Under a honey mesquite tree, lounge chairs surrounded a hot tub with a fire pit nearby. Izzy looked past a low brick wall to the monument and listened to the music floating out of the house. She remembered what Ever had said to her about souls. Music as proof that the soul existed.

◆◆◆

She fell asleep and woke later. Ever stood over her. The sun was setting behind him, limning his body, making him glow.

“You hungry?”

She blinked up at him. Something flashed between them like a mirror in the sun.

“We’re going to make dinner,” he said.

She smelled chlorine, the ghost of smoldering coals, the citronella of insect repellent. Ever took a lighter from his pocket and crouched down on his heels over the fire pit. He flicked the lighter, holding the flame to the kindling until it ignited. He, Izzy, and the band wrapped corncobs, veggie burgers, and buns in foil and laid everything on the grill. No one said much, and Izzy was grateful for that. She ate a plate full of food and drank a beer. After dinner, they roasted marshmallows. Ever pulled one off the stake and let it cool before he handed it to her. The sweet goo melted into her mouth, but the char of burnt sugar grazed her tongue almost painfully.